by Tony Birch
‘You know anyone else over there?’
‘Not really. There’s a friend of Gwen’s, but no one else. Pop’s is the only place we know.’
Ray scoffed. ‘No wonder she’s a barrel of laughs, with an old man like that.’
He slapped Limbo on the back. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t end up in Purgatory. You got no fucken soul, and even if you did, there’d be no one praying to get you out.’
A worker in a dirty apron came over to the table. He smiled at Limbo. He had a glass ashtray in his hand.
‘Hey ya, mate. You can’t smoke in here. Let me take it for you and butt it out.’
Ray and Limbo laughed out loud, as if the man had told them a joke. He tried again.
‘It’s not on my account. It’s the Health Department that makes the rules. If I let you to smoke inside the café and they come by, I could be in trouble.’
Limbo looked around the café. A teenage couple were sitting at another booth kissing and hugging, while a road worker was perched on a stool at the counter.
‘Well, mate. Unless they’re undercover I reckon we’ll get away with it.’
He took a drag on the cigarette and blew the smoke in the man’s face. ‘Now fuck off and let me finish this in peace.’
The man knew better than to ask again and retreated behind the counter. Limbo finished his cigarette, butted it on the tabletop and stood up.
‘We paid, Ray?’
‘Na. I reckon it’s on the house.’
Back at the motel Gwen put on a pair of tight jeans and a singlet top and went down to the bar on her own. She wasn’t happy. Ray had taken off with Limbo and wouldn’t say when he was coming back. I ordered a bowl of chips from room service, lay on the bed and turned on the TV. I flicked through about thirty channels before I found something to watch. It was a movie about a boy who could fly. I’d seen it before, but it was a good one. I rested my head on the pillow and sat the bowl on my chest.
I woke up in the middle of the night with Ray standing over the bed. Limbo was behind him, eating one of my cold chips. Ray had a bag over his shoulder. It was red and looked new, not the same one he’d had earlier.
‘You seen Gwen? She’s not in her the room.’
‘She went downstairs, maybe.’
He handed the bag to Limbo. ‘Look after this. I’ll be back up in a minute.’
At little while later I heard Gwen and Ray arguing. I got out of bed, put my ear to the wall and listened. Ray was calling her all sorts of names and screaming about someone he’d seen her sitting with at the bar. Gwen yelled back at him. I heard something smash against the wall. The fighting was loud enough to wake Rachel.
‘What’s going on, Jesse?’
‘Nothing. They’re having a party. You know what they’re like.’
‘It doesn’t sound like a party to me. I can hear Gwen crying.’
‘That’s a song playing. I want you to close your eyes and go back to sleep.’
I got back into bed and turned onto my stomach. I was more or less asleep when Rachel tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Jesse, can I get into bed with you?’
I threw the blanket back and let her climb in next to me. I turned my back on her. She tapped me on the shoulder again.
‘Can I hold onto you?’
‘Yeah. But keep still.’
In the morning we found Gwen on top of her bed with her body tucked into a ball. She was wearing only her underpants and a bra and had bruises all over her. I could see a dark patch above one breast about the size of a fist. Streaks of mascara ran down her cheeks and her lipstick was smudged across her face. An ashtray was turned upside down on the bed and the floor was covered in more cigarette butts, empty glasses, a whiskey bottle and some of her clothes, which had been torn apart. A clock radio was smashed to pieces on the floor.
I could feel Rachel’s breath on my neck. I told her to go back to our room and stay there until I came for her.
When she didn’t move I yelled at her. ‘Get out of here!’
She ran past me, jumped onto the bed next to Gwen and put her arms around her neck. Gwen wrapped her hands around Rachel’s face and smothered her with kisses until her cheeks were painted with lipstick. Gwen leaned across to the bedside table, picked up a half-full glass, sniffed it and took a long swig, then sunk back into the mattress. She tried pushing Rachel away.
‘Move your arse, little sister. What time is it, Jesse? We’ve gotta get out of here.’
When she tried sitting up, she caught her breath a couple of times and hunched over in pain. ‘This is killing me, Jesse. You got to help me up. I think I’ve broken a rib or something where the bastard kicked me.’
She put her feet on the floor and tried lifting her arms. ‘Help me up.’
She hung her arms around my neck and held on tight as she could while I lifted her to her feet. She fell forward and head butted me, not too hard. Her breath stunk of grog and cigarettes. I looked into her eyes and then the bruises underneath them and a cut above one eye. She looked away from me. I reckoned she was about to cry. I wasn’t too sure how I felt about her right then. But I knew I’d do anything I had to to hurt Ray, kill him even.
She fell to her knees and crawled across the floor, grabbing her clothes as she went. When she got to the dressing table she pulled herself up and looked at herself in the mirror.
‘I’m a piece of shit.’
She picked up a hairbrush and raked it through her hair. ‘What time is it, Jesse?’
‘After twelve.’
She grabbed at her breasts and rearranged them in her bra. ‘We’re going back to Melbourne.’
‘Does Ray know we’re leaving?’
She pointed at her battered face. ‘Look what he fucken did to me. You think I’m gonna tell him? We won’t be here when he gets back.’
She picked up a denim dress off the floor. As she tried putting it on she fell back on the bed. ‘I’ll need a hand, Jesse. Anything here that’s mine, on the floor, in the bathroom, the wardrobe, throw it on top of the bed. I’ll pack it up. Then go back to your room and pack up your stuff. Quick.’
I walked to the sink and filled a glass with water. ‘Want any, Rachel?’
‘Jesus, fuck me, Jesse. Move! Don’t you get it? You, of all people. He kicked the shit out of me last night and his mad mate Limbo nearly killed some poor bloke sitting at the bar minding his own business. They’re psychos. We have to get away from here before he gets back.’
Rachel sat on the bed while I picked up some of Gwen’s things from the floor. She didn’t like what she’d heard, and had started a conversation with Comfort.
Gwen finally got the dress on. She stood up, breathed in and zipped it up. ‘He’ll be back later tonight. Maybe early morning. I heard them talking. They had another drive to do, some pick-up.’
She got down on her hands and knees, and pulled out her purse from between the mattress and the bed-base. She opened it, rifled through it and then tipped it upside down on the bed. All that fell out was a five-dollar note and some coins.
‘Great. We’re rich.’
She threw the purse on the bed, went into the bathroom and closed the door.
‘You going to help, Rachel, or what?’ I asked.
‘I’m tired out.’
‘Yeah, so am I. Bad luck. Go back to our room and get all your stuff out of the drawers.’
‘No.’
She was being a pain in the arse. I dragged her off the bed and pushed her out of the room. ‘I said do it. Didn’t you hear what she said about Ray? Do you want him coming after us? Go.’
I was pulling some of Gwen’s clothes from their hangers when I noticed in the bottom corner of the wardrobe, stuffed behind some pillows, the red sports bag that Ray had with him the night before. It
felt heavy when I picked it up. I put the bag on the bed and opened it. There was money inside, lots of it, in rolls. There was also a plastic bag with a gun inside and some loose bullets. The gun was silver and had a wooden handle. I heard the toilet flush. I zipped the bag and put it back where I’d found it.
‘Jesse, load up from the mini-bar here, in your room and whatever else you can grab. And go in the bathroom. Grab the soaps and shampoos and those nice white face washers. Blankets. Anything that might come in handy.’
‘Face washers?’
‘Yeah. And the towels. We have no money, grab whatever you can.’
I packed our case and shifted it to Gwen’s room. She hung a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign from the doorknob and we went down to the dining room for something to eat.
‘I thought we were in a hurry,’ I said as we walked down the stairs.
‘We are, but not in too much to get a decent feed into us. We mightn’t be eating for a while.’
We ordered roast chicken, baked potatoes and onion rings. When lunch was over Gwen winked at the waiter and told him to be sure to put a big tip on the tab for himself.
She took us out to the Commodore and emptied the boot of rubbish and drove it to a parking bay alongside the fire escape. She ordered Rachel to sit in the back of the car and wait for us.
‘I don’t wanna.’ She didn’t want to be left alone.
‘Well, you have to.’
‘What about my things? What about Comfort?’
‘Jesse’s packed it all. Wait there.’
Upstairs, I picked up two pillowcases of stuff we’d knocked off. Gwen grabbed her bag and another pillowcase.
‘You’ll have to come back for yours and Rache’s suitcase.’
When I did, I went straight to the wardrobe and grabbed the sports bag. I then threw our suitcase on the bed and unzipped it. It was packed tight with dirty clothes, my backpack, the binoculars and Rachel’s old teddy. I took Comfort out and laid him on the bed. I hung the binoculars around my neck, threw out some of the dirty clothes and shoved the sports bag inside. I was about to close the door behind me when I remembered Comfort. I tucked him under my arm and slammed the door behind me.
Gwen had a large packet of toilet rolls under one arm and a cardboard box in the other.
‘What’s in the box?’
‘Bottles of water and packets of biscuits. This will have to do until we get back to Melbourne.’
As we drove out of Adelaide I thought about the bag of money in the boot. By the time Ray and Limbo got back to the motel we’d be in Melbourne. I rested my head against the seat and watched through the window. We drove through the near-empty streets. Slowly there were less and less houses until all I could see was some trees and grass and the road ahead.
FOUR
The road baked in the heat. The air conditioning was grumbling so loud I could hardly hear the radio, even though it was up full blast. Gwen chain-smoked and stared out the rear-view mirror, checking behind us more than she watched the road up ahead. When she wasn’t smoking she was biting on her fingernails. If she’d known what I’d put in the boot, she’d have been chewing her fingers to the bone.
We were two hours gone from Adelaide, not far from the Victorian border, when Gwen pulled off the highway into a store. There were bags of manure and soil stacked out the front, racks of gas bottles and one petrol pump. I hadn’t counted on stopping, and it made me nervous. As soon as Ray and Limbo found out about their money they’d be searching for us.
‘Why we pulling in here? Shouldn’t we keep driving before it gets dark?’
‘Got no choice, Jesse. We’ve run out of petrol.’
She parked next to the pump, turned the engine off, sat for a few minutes and tapped her broken nails on the steering wheel. I knew what she was thinking without having to ask.
‘Have you got any money on you, Jesse? Even a few dollars?’
‘I’ve got nothing,’ I lied.
‘Well, there’s less than ten in my purse, and I’m not parting with that. Looks like we’ll have to bike it. You fill up while I sit here, ready for the run. You know what to do. Hurry before someone comes out to help us.’
We’d done plenty of biking over the years and only came close to getting caught one time when Gwen left me standing at the bowser and took off down the road. I was lucky that the kid behind the counter didn’t seem to care what we were up to. I’d run after the car and jumped back in before he’d moved his arse.
Having done it before didn’t make me feel any better, but I was ready to do just about anything to get us back on the road.
‘Okay. But don’t you leave without me.’
Rachel unwound her window. ‘Where you going, Jesse? Can you get me an ice – ?’
‘No, he can’t,’ Gwen interrupted.
‘Maybe I’ll go for myself, then.’
‘No you won’t. Don’t you move. Jesse has something important to do.’
I waved and smiled at the man sitting behind the counter in the shop. He had no hair and looked pretty old and overweight. I felt a bit better. He’d be slow off the mark. He waved and went back to the newspaper he was reading. I kept an eye on him as I filled up. Petrol splashed all over my jeans when the tank was full. As soon as I put the nozzle back in its holster he looked up at me. I waved again, opened the door and jumped in the front seat just as Gwen put her foot on the accelerator.
Nothing happened. She’d stalled the car.
‘Fuck,’ she screamed.
The old man scratched his head like he wasn’t sure what was going on. When he worked it out he jumped down from his seat, reached under the counter and picked something up in his hand. He was quicker than I thought he’d be.
‘Gwen, he’s coming. He’s coming.’
He ran out of the store, waving around a small baseball bat. I leaned across Gwen and pushed the button down, locking her door. I quickly did the same to Rachel’s and my door. She took one look at the crazy man running toward us, and covered her eyes with her hands.
He grabbed Gwen’s doorhandle and tried ripping it open with one hand as he showed her the bat with the other. ‘Open up. You’ve fifty bucks’ worth in that tank.’ She kept on pumping the accelerator and turning the key. When he worked out he couldn’t get the door open he took the bat in both hands and swung it at the side window. The window didn’t break but the bat split in two. He threw the two shattered bits onto the ground.
‘Open the door, you thieving bitch.’
He picked up a long metal pole leaning against the bowser and ran around to the other side of the car. Rachel took a peek just as he speared her window with the pole. She ducked as the pole shattered the window, showering her with glass. ‘Go, go,’ she screamed. ‘He’s going to get us.’ He ran to the front of the car and took aim at Gwen’s head as the motor kicked into life. She slammed her foot down and would have run right over the top of him if he hadn’t jumped out of the way.
We screeched out of the driveway and back onto the highway. I turned to see the man running after us with the pole held above his head. He tried chucking it at us like a javelin thrower, but he didn’t have the strength. The pole skidded along the road, sending out sparks.
It was late in the day when we crossed into Victoria. Gwen pulled off the road again and stuck a towel in the door, covering Rachel’s broken window. She cleared out as much of the broken glass as she could, and had to pick some out of Rachel’s clothes and hair.
‘Was he a bad man?’ Rachel asked, as Gwen sat her on her lap and combed through her hair with her fingers, looking for glass.
Gwen looked at her like she was stupid. ‘Na. He was your guardian angel. What do you reckon that thing he was waving around was? A magic wand or something?’
When we got going again I saw a few sheep and a cow along the road and
some old farm machinery tangled with weeds that looked like it hadn’t moved in years. Every now and then the car sputtered and slowed a bit. Even with Gwen’s foot to the floor the speedo was going backwards. I looked out of the back window now and then, worried the Camaro might be on our tail. I suddenly realised that taking the money had been a mistake. Between Ray and Limbo I was sure they’d do whatever they had to, to get it back. But there was nothing I could do about it now. If I dumped the bag and they lost the money anyway, they’d be even madder and would skin me if they caught up to us.
Rachel was lying across the back seat, half asleep. Every now and then she’d open her eyes and get her fingers to dance in front of her eyes. I looked down at the scar across the top of my thumb and thought about the day in the kitchen when I’d promised her that sharing our blood would keep us together. If Ray and Limbo did come after us, I’d have a tough time dragging her with me if I got the chance to run.
The country we were driving through was flat as an iron and bone dry. The sky was big, blue and empty, except for a flaming ball of sun, low in the sky. It had tracked us all day like a satellite, and it looked about ready to explode. I got thirsty just looking at it but didn’t think it’d be a good idea to ask Gwen to stop and get some water from the boot in case the car conked out.
As the car got slower and slower the massive trucks that hurled by threw us from side to side. Everything we passed on the side of the road – a stunted tree, an animal in a field, even the buildings – looked as good as dead, whipped by the dust and wind.
To take my mind off Ray and Limbo I started counting the roadkill: rabbits, kangaroos, wombats and maybe a fox. It was hard to be sure. Some of the bodies were so flat they’d spread across the road like a jam sandwich. We passed a hawk, or maybe an eagle even, on the side of the road, hunched over a carcass, tearing into it with its claws and sharp beak. I also saw dead birds that seemed to have dropped out of the sky. As we drove by a broken wing would lift in the breeze.
Rachel could hear me counting. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Look.’
I pointed to a lump of fur up ahead of us. A car was travelling towards us in the opposite direction so Gwen had no chance to swerve and miss the dead animal. She drove straight over the top of it.
